おっさん (ossan)

What it means

1. 1.

   A middle-aged bloke. Rude to his face — the neutral word is おじさん — but ordinary in the third person and very common self-deprecatingly.

   Age is the sting. Calling a thirty-five-year-old おっさん is a joke about how far gone he is.

Examples with translations

• 電車で隣のおっさんがいびきかいてた。

  The bloke next to me on the train was snoring away.

• もう完全におっさんだわ、俺。

  I've officially become a middle-aged man.

Where it comes from

A contraction of おじさん, 'uncle', which Japanese uses for any man of that generation whether related or not. Shortening a kinship term this way strips the politeness out of it.

Other forms

Romanised as:

ossan

Spellings and variants:

おじさん, オッサン